'What about my mind?'
'Isn't that part of the package?'
She took the top this time, settled onto him, moved back and forth, side to side, up and down. She smiled at him as he reached for her jiggling breasts, and after that she was not aware of single movements or individual strokes; everything blurred into a continuous, fluid, superheated motion that had no beginning and no end.
At midnight, they went to the kitchen and prepared a very late dinner, a cold meal of cheese and leftover chicken and fruit and chilled white wine. They brought everything back to the bedroom and ate a little, fed each other a little, then lost interest in the food before they'd eaten much of anything.
They were like a couple of teenagers, obsessed with their bodies and blessed with apparently limitless stamina. As they rocked in rhythmic ecstasy, Hilary was acutely aware that this was not merely a series of sex acts in which they were engaged; this was an important ritual, a profound ceremony that was cleansing her of long- nurtured fears. She was entrusting herself to another human being in a way she would have thought impossible only a week ago, for she was putting her pride out of the way, prostrating herself, offering herself up to him, risking rejection and humiliation and degradation, with the fragile hope that he would not misuse her. And he did not. A lot of the things they did might have been degrading with the wrong partner, but with Tony each act was exhalting, uplifting, glorious. She was not yet able to tell him that she loved him, not with words, but she was saying the same thing when, in bed, she begged him to do whatever he wanted with her, leaving herself no protection, opening herself completely, until, finally, kneeling before him, she used her lips and tongue to draw one last ounce of sweetness from his loins.
Her hatred for Earl and Emma was as strong now as it had been when they were alive, for it was their influence that made her unable to express her feelings to Tony. She wondered what she would have to do to break the chains that they had put on her.
For a while, she and Tony lay in bed, holding each other, saying nothing because nothing needed to be said.
Ten minutes later, at four-thirty in the morning, she said, 'I should be getting home.'
'Stay.'
'Are you capable of doing more?'
'God, no! I'm wiped out. I just want to hold you. Sleep here.' he said.
'If I stay, we won't sleep.'
'Are you capable of doing more?'
'Unfortunately, dear man, I'm not. But I've got things to do tomorrow, and so have you. And we're much too excited and too full of each other to get any rest so long as we're sharing a bed. We'll keep touching like this, talking like this, resisting sleep like this.'
'Well,' he said, 'we've got to learn to spend the night together. I mean, we're going to be spending a lot of them in the same bed, don't you think?'
'Many, many,' she said. 'The first night's the worst. We'll adjust when the novelty wears off. I'll start wearing curlers and cold cream to bed.'
'And I'll start smoking cigars and watching Johnny Carson.'
'Such a shame,' she said.
'Of course, it'll take a bit of time for the freshness to wear off.'
'A bit,' she agreed.
'Like fifty years.'
'Or sixty.'
They delayed her leaving for another fifteen minutes, but finally she got up and dresssed. Tony pulled on a pair of jeans. In the living room, as they walked toward the door, she stopped and stared at one of his paintings and said, 'I want to take six of your best pieces to Wyant Stevens in Beverly Hills and see if he'll handle you.'
'He won't.'
'I want to try.'
'That's one of the best galleries.'
'Why start at the bottom?'
He stared at her, but he seemed to be seeing someone else. At last, he said, 'Maybe I should jump.'
'Jump?'
He told her about the impassioned advice he had received from Eugene Tucker, the black ex-convict who was now designing dresses.
'Tucker is right,' she said. 'And this isn't even a jump. It's only a little hop. You're not quitting your job with the police department or anything. You're just testing the waters.'
Tony shrugged. 'Wyant Stevens will turn me down cold, but I guess I don't lose anything by giving him the chance to do it.'
'He won't turn you down,' she said. 'Pick out half a dozen paintings you feel are most representative of your work. I'll try to get us an appointment with Wyant either later today or tomorrow.'
'You pick them out right now,' he said. 'Take them with you. When you get a chance to see Stevens, show them to him.'
'But I'm sure he'll want to meet you.'
'If he likes what he sees, then he'll want to meet me. And if he does like it, I'll be happy to go see him.'
